A Brief history of Neoz, Xbox gaming clan - formed November 2004.
How Clan Themes has improved my Clan in every sense of the pimp word.
Neophytez was formed just after the release of Halo 2 on the XBOX, Novermber 2004, and is still going strong to this day.
Neophytez slowly evolved into a community built for gamers looking for a laugh online [XBOX LIVE] and offline who enjoy having friendly banter, playing videogames on and offline and also joking around and having general banter on the forums.
Neophytez is nearly in its thrid year and still going strong (even though we have faced some rough patches) and the site has just been rebuilt (build 6.0)!
Part of our community are the generations (or the parents) that grew up on Atari 2600, Intellivision and the Commodore 64.
Our Mission: The Mission of Neophytez is simple: We want to provide a haven for gamers to connect with other gamers and get the most fun out of their Xbox Live experience.
The absolute most we want to offer is a place to chat, have a laff and mostly piss about!
We are all about the fun element of gaming - we don't play to win - thats an added bonus if we do but all we aim to do is have a laugh.
The games we currently play on and off are [XBOX 360 only]:
PES 6
PGR 3
RSV
COD 3
GOW
GRAW 2
Halo 2 (Occasional mess abouts)
Halo 3 Beta
Of course there will be more games supported such as Forza Motorsport 2, Colin McRae Dirt and more.
Our member base has a core user base of 20 active members so it is not a big community but we do have more people coming in slowly but the site is heavily vetted - we do not tolerate time waters so if we get any they have a max of 2 weeks to get a total of 20 posts on the forum if not they are booted - there can be exceptions if said members plays alot online.
Our intentions for the future are to expand the member base and hopefully have more to offer the average XBOX 360 gamer.
We are expecting an influx of new members once Halo 3 gets released but again they will be observed for activity and vetted.
Mistakes have happened such as handling post match reports like a sore loser but in the long term this has made myself a better player as you have to understand there will always be someone out there that is better than you.
Other mistakes have been previous site designs where the site was built as just a forum - although this was enough at the time i thought it could be so much more.
The first site [build 1.0] we had was a PHP Nuke site and was very basic at the time compared to what is now available and was custom built for Halo 2 so it did get out of date after a while which led on to versions 2-4 being built and like to think all of these were a build up to what was the best site so far - build 5.0 - so i started to build a design around IPB and this can be seen here
http://www.neophytez.co.uk - this is the old 5.0 site.
This leads on to how i found Clan-Themes... I was scouring the web as the hosting for the old site was on a former members server and the hosting was due to be renewed so i started to look at other options and wanted to start with PHP Nuke again as i had used it a few years ago with the first design so i had had a previous taste of what could be done before.
From the moment i saw the Multi Warrior theme and the rest of the stuff you had on Clan Themes i was convinced this was the right step to take.
Now we are on build 6.0 [
http://www.neophytez.com] and i have had a good muck about with the mods i am now working on build 7.0 which is now built with Nuke Raven and i will be putting the best mods i can find on the new site to suit the needs of the clan - i have had a few members testing it for me this time round (i ported the user sql to the new Raven sql and all sign ins work well) and i had noticed a few errors with Nuke Sentinel thru the testing members and now [i hope] the problem is fixed.
I cannot begin to put into words how much this site has helped me even though my clan is not big or making money for me it is something i am dedicated to and the community make everyting i do worth all the effort i put in and almost all the stuff i have installed from the site from Clan Themes provides so much choice and so much scope than i had previously imagined i would be able to find.
Things i would like more of - more themes of a minimal kind [much like the Green Theme but maybe more colour choices like Black, Blue etc] Kudos to Ped for the Green Theme!
My site lacks a few features i would like such as xbox 360 specific mods such as Gamertags in the forums, having profile options such as a tab in the forum view [like MSN, YIM etc] to add a person to your friends list [XBOX LIVE only], perhaps a module/block that could cross reference a user and the games said users has - so you could click a users name from member list and go into their profile and also see what games they have [games input via profile edit and on registration], simple editible leagues components so you could customise the base of the league for example a league for driving games and time trials etc.
I do think if scope was allowed for video game clans such as 360, PS3, Wii, Multiformat (mods, themes etc) the user base volume would be vasty increased if advertised right.
I could go one but i will end this and hope you made it this far...
BTW...
You guys are legends!
Keep up all the amazing hard work!
